I am quite concerned with the additional layer, and that's not just for public expenditure purposes, although that is important. From our perspective, it adds a level of distance between the political accountability.... It is admirable to say we have these reports coming out--even when governments are ignoring them--because that adds pressure. Fair enough. But it also allows any government to simply say, well, we're waiting for the rapporteur.
The experience, again, as I've heard from looking at the Dutch example, and for which you've just now heard confirmation, is that it's going to take at least two or three years. The government is not going to act, because it will say we have this rapporteur and now we have to wait. That's two or three years, and then you're going to need another year to get an action plan. We're talking about 2015 before any victim program or assistance or legal change is going to take place. That is a very troubling prospect.
The reason you have a distinction between information intelligence gathering and policy implementation is a very good one. It's because you don't want people who are supposed to be researching a problem to be solving it at the same time. That doesn't mean those can't be within the same office. It means that office is charged with a mandate. There is the research division and the policy division. I do think you keep those roles separate, but that does not mean creating another level of bureaucracy.
Ideally, a non-governmental group should be the one raising this to the national attention. I can tell you that if the government decided to do nothing on this, tomorrow our organization would be out there talking about it. You don't have to be run on government funding to do that.